The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherei...n these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate, so that being thrown into the balance it may prevent either scale from preponderating.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

When we sent our first child off to school I experienced a jarring moment, an epiphany. I had been teaching young children for man...y years, advising parents on a wide range of issues, including the best and most painless ways to separate from their youngsters at school. When my own time came, I found that all my good advice to others was impossible to follow myself.... I felt like a midwife friend of mine who had assisted in the births of hundreds of babies before her own first child was born. In the middle of labor she cried out, "I've told hundreds of women, 'you can do it,' and it can't be done."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judge...s, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected--those, precisely, who need the laws's protection most!--and listens to their testimony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Of all the barbarous middle ages, thatWhich is most barbarous is the middle age...Of man! it is--I really scarce know what;But when we hover between fool and sage,And don't know justly what we would be at--A period something like a printed page,Black letter upon foolscap, while our hairGrows grizzled, and we are not what we were.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for the... eighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Someday soon, we hope that all middle and high school will have required courses in child rearing for girls and boys to help prepa...re them for one of the most important and rewarding tasks of their adulthood: being a parent. Most of us become parents in our lifetime and it is not acceptable for young people to be steeped in ignorance or questionable folklore when they begin their critical journey as mothers and fathers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The middle years of parenthood are characterized by ambiguity. Our kids are no longer helpless, but neither are they independent. ...We are still active parents but we have more time now to concentrate on our personal needs. Our children's world has expanded. It is not enclosed within a kind of magic dotted line drawn by us. Although we are still the most important adults in their lives, we are no longer the only significant adults.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

One of the most difficult aspects of being a parent during the middle years is feeling powerless to protect our children from hurt.... However "growthful" it may be for them to experience failure, disappointment and rejection, it is nearly impossible to maintain an intellectual perspective when our sobbing child or rageful child comes in to us for help. . . . We can't turn the hurt around by kissing the sore spot to make it better. We are no longer the all-powerful parent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The responsibilities of parenthood take on a more subtle cast during the middle years. . . . Our child is becoming a more consciou...s partner in his or her growth. . . . Each time our children take a new step, each time we allow them to move ahead to try something they've never tried before, we go through a period of doubt and questioning and ambivalent feelings until the new skill is mastered or the new rules are established. It is one of the most common experiences of parenthood, and it is also one of the most challenging.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The Miss America contest is ... the most perfectly rendered theater in our culture, for it so perfectly captures what we yearn for...: a low-class ritual, a polished restatement of vulgarity, that wants to open the door to high-class respectability by way of plain middle-class anxiety and ambition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »